An Old Faithful Murder

by Valerie Wolzien

  “Did Phyllis tell you to talk to me?” Susan asked.

  “Yes. She thought it imperative that you understand this. She told me you were investigating the murder for her.”

  “Yes.”

  “She has lost her husband, and now she is trying to save her son,” he said.

  “I can understand that.” Susan felt for the woman. “But why is she so sure Darcy killed him? Why is everyone so sure that Darcy killed him?”

  “Probably because he says he did. He made a confession over an hour ago.”

  Susan, Kathleen, and Dr. Irving Cockburn looked up at the earnest face of Marnie Mackay.

  THIRTY

  “I don’t know any reason why you shouldn’t see him. The poor guy is just sitting there with this incredible look of pain on his face. But he probably won’t talk to you. He’s refused to speak with any of his family—they’ve all been trying to change his mind for the last hour.”

  “That’s how long you’ve had him in custody?” Susan asked. She was skiing as fast as she could to keep up. Marnie Mackay had already explained that Darcy had come to her, saying that he had killed his father and he was turning himself in. “He came to me because, apparently, he didn’t know what else to do. So I told him that he was under arrest, and we turned the warming hut next to the Visitor’s Center into a temporary holding cell, arranged a schedule of rangers to guard him in their off-duty hours, and … and that’s it. With this storm coming in, it’s really all we could do. We called the FBI and the police station at Jackson, but until this storm lifts, no one is coming in and no one is going out.”

  “And he refused to see anybody—even his mother?”

  “Yes. We told her immediately, of course, and she came over, but he insisted that he didn’t want to speak to her. And it is his right, you know. We certainly can’t insist that he see his mother—or anyone in the family, for that matter. They’ve all tried, and they’ve all been turned away.” She shrugged. “I sure hope you can convince him to talk. The poor guy looks like he’s going to explode from the pain inside him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the face of despair before—it’s a lot like my worst nightmare.”

  “Is he safe?” Susan asked. “I mean, he can’t hurt himself, can he?”

  “No. We took away his Swiss army knife and his belt, so he couldn’t do anything. The hut’s heated by a wood stove, but there’s a ranger watching through the window at all times, as well as one at the door.

  “We told him he could make a statement now or wait till the storm clears and make it to whoever is sent in to take care of this case. He chose to wait. So that’s really where things stand right now.”

  “I know how this looks, so this sounds like a stupid question, but do you think he did it?”

  “No. I guess I don’t.” Marnie stopped, and Susan skied up to her side.

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “No. I’m in charge right now. I didn’t think it would be appropriate to comment. Look, most of the rangers get a certain amount of police training these days. The national parks reflect the world outside their boundaries, and we have our share of crimes like anyplace else, and I spent some time training to be a police officer before coming to the Park Service, but I’m not thrilled to be handling this alone. Unfortunately, the weather isn’t giving me any choice. And I don’t want to do anything to screw this up—for Darcy Ericksen or for the National Park Service.

  “And that’s why I came to you. Someone has to do something for that kid—and you were the only person I could think of.”

  “But first I have to get him to talk to me.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You said that the rest of his family has tried—alone or all together?”

  “Each and every one came over individually, starting with his mother. And he refused them all.”

  “How … ?”

  “They all wrote him a note, a ranger took it in, he read it, and then he refused. That’s all.” She skied off.

  “So what am I going to say that will convince him to see me?” Susan followed the ranger.

  “Good question,” Marnie called back over her shoulder. “Think quick. We’re almost there.” She waved a ski at a minuscule log cabin almost hidden in a grove of ponderosa pine. A park ranger, snow covering his heavy down jumpsuit, stamped his feet in place by the door.

  “Looks cozy.” Susan was relieved that Darcy, who had suffered so much these past few days, was spending time here where silvery smoke curled from the stone chimney, and red and white checked curtains hung at the windows.

  “There are cabins like this one all over the park,” Marnie explained. “We keep fires burning in them all winter so hikers, skiers, and anyone else out in this weather can always find someplace to keep warm.” She turned her skis to stop. “Thought of anything to say?”

  “Do you have a paper and pencil?”

  “Sure do.” Marnie handed them over. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Is that all?” Marnie asked almost immediately, taking back the paper on which Susan had written only five words before folding it in half.

  “That’s all I can think of.”

  Marnie gave the note to the ranger at the door, exchanging a few words with him before he went inside the cabin.

  “I thought he could use a few minutes to warm up,” Marnie came back to her. “He says Darcy is looking worse.… Hey! He’s waving us over. Maybe it’s good news.”

  “I don’t know what you did, but he’s agreed to see you,” the ranger announced happily. “Sure hope you can help him. He needs it.”

  “I’ll be in the office at the Visitor’s Center. Please come see me when you get done,” Marnie asked quietly as Susan took off her skis and leaned them up against the side of the building.

  Susan agreed before entering the door the man held open for her. The cabin was sparsely furnished with a half dozen wooden benches arranged to be as near as possible to the large, black wood-burning stove. A door at the back of the room announced that a bathroom was behind it. A bulletin board hung on one wall, carrying many of the same announcements and messages that Susan had seen elsewhere in the park. A topographical map of Yellowstone was pinned on the wall near the door. Darcy was sitting by the stove, biting one of his fingernails.

  “It tells where people have spotted various animals this winter,” he explained, seeing her glance at the map. “The colored pins stuck in it stand for different kinds of animals—like green for moose, red for bison, blue for snow goose—”

  “Trumpeter swan.”

  “What?” Darcy seemed startled by her words.

  “The blue stand for trumpeter swan,” Susan explained. “It says so on this chart here.” She pointed at a sheet of paper swinging from its own pin on the wall, and was relieved to see the beginnings of a smile on the young man’s face. “I’m glad you could see me.”

  “Do you believe what you wrote here?” Darcy asked, throwing the piece of paper through the crack in the stove door.

  “You don’t?”

  “I thought …” He sighed loudly. “I don’t know what I thought.”

  “Why did you confess to the murder? You didn’t kill your father, did you?”

  “I wanted to. I really wanted to. I really thought he killed Randy.” He started crying.

  Susan waited a moment for him to calm himself before she asked her next question. “Do you know that for a fact, or are you just guessing?”

  “Who else could it be?”

  “I don’t know,” Susan confessed, “but any one of a number of people could have done it, couldn’t they?”

  “But why? Only my father hated him.”

  “Are you sure? You couldn’t have known everything about his life now, could you?”

  “No, but—”

  “Maybe you should tell me what you do know about all of this. From the beginning. It’s the only way I’m going to be able to help you,” she added as he hesitated.

 
“I guess …” He stopped to take a deep breath. “I guess the beginning was the day we arrived here.”

  “When was that?”

  “We got here the same day you did. Randy and I came in on one of the morning snowcoaches. Charlotte and Jane did, too. We had all met in Jackson Hole the night before. We arrived on different flights, and Randy and I were staying in a different hotel, but we had arranged to meet for dinner in a restaurant that Jane knew about. My sisters have known that I’m gay for five years or so, but they hadn’t met Randy before.…”

  “And you all hit it off?”

  “Yeah. I was very nervous about bringing Randy along, and I’m afraid that I tried to drink away my fears.…” He almost laughed. “We all had a great time that night.”

  “And the next day?”

  “Until dinner on the next day, we were fine,” he answered. “The drive here was fun—maybe a little bumpy for someone suffering from a first-class hangover, but Mother was here to meet us all. And we all got together for lunch.…”

  “Where was … ?”

  “My father was out doing some exploring on his own.”

  “And your mother had met Randy before?” Susan remembered what Beth had reported.

  “Yes, a few times. We live together in New York City, and Mother loves to come to the city, attend the art exhibits, and tour the galleries every few months. She even helped decorate our apartment, which was sweet of her,” he added, a little doubtfully.

  “Each generation has its own taste,” Susan muttered tactfully.

  “True.” Darcy frowned. “But she’s around so often that we really don’t want to offend her and put anything away.…”

  Susan wondered what version of the batik curtains Phyllis had foisted off on her son and his lover. “Your mother liked Randy?” was all she asked.

  He surprised her by not answering immediately. “I think so. She’s met a few of my other … other lovers … and she’s never acted like she didn’t like any of them. And she was the same with Randy.”

  “Was he different for you? Were you more serious about him than anyone else?”

  “He could have been, I think. I’m older and more settled now, but who knows what will happen in the future?”

  “Your father hadn’t met Randy, though?”

  “No. I told my family that I was gay my freshman year of college. But my father choose to ignore that information, never recognizing the men I’ve lived with, even going so far as to ask things like when was I going to meet a nice girl and settle down and get married?”

  “He didn’t respect your decision?”

  “He didn’t respect anything about me. I was born a disappointment to him. And I’d been letting that rule my life. After telling him that I was gay, I spent the next three and a half years pretending not to be—at least as far as my father was concerned. Maybe Randy wasn’t different, maybe our relationship wouldn’t have lasted, but I was different. I was standing up for what I was. The invitation to this family fiasco included what my mother chooses to call significant others. Jane and Charlotte chose to come alone. Jon brought Beth. I brought Randy—and look what happened. Poor Randy’s dead. Father’s dead. Mother is close to some sort of breakdown—and all because of me.” He looked at Susan. “You see, I do wish that I had killed him.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  “That,” Susan began in her most maternal voice, “is simply not true. You did what you had to do, and if someone reacted to that with murder, it’s not your fault. And certainly not your responsibility.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. No one can drive another person to kill. It’s the killer’s decision—and his responsibility. Now tell me exactly what happened when you introduced Randy to your father.”

  “We all met for drinks in my parents’ room. Randy and I got there a little late. To tell the truth, we stopped at the bar for a little liquid courage. Not that we wouldn’t get enough to drink—my father has always been very liberal with his alcohol, I’ll give him that.”

  “And … ?”

  “And we were the last to arrive. My parents were standing together in the middle of the room, with Carlton and Joyce close by. They all looked over when we walked through the door.”

  “And … ?”

  “My father said something to my mother, but I couldn’t hear what, then Mother’s eyes filled with tears, and my father glared at Randy, then at me.…”

  “But what did he say?”

  “Father didn’t speak at times like these.…”

  “Times like what?”

  “Times when his children disappointed him—at times like that, he just growled.”

  “What did he growl?” Susan continued to question.

  “ ‘How could you do this to your mother?’ I think those were his exact words. My father was always claiming that my mother’s heart was breaking over something I had done—even if it was something she had told me to my face that she had accepted. He was like that about everything—my being gay, an artist, moving to New York.” His words came out as sobs. “Don’t you see? I love my mother, and my father used those feelings to try to blackmail me into being someone I’m not—and someone my mother wouldn’t necessarily like. It’s unconscionable.”

  Susan thought so, too. “Did you say anything to either of your parents?”

  “Well, I didn’t have to introduce Randy to my mother, and my father was rather obvious in his repugnance of my lover, so I just went over to Carlton and Joyce. They seemed willing to be friendly to Randy, and that’s all I really cared about at that moment.”

  “But you all went to dinner together that night.”

  “Yes. And I actually did get the opportunity to introduce Randy to my father. I had to, for Randy’s sake,” he added.

  “And you were all together that night at the ranger talk, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. Doing the family thing. You see, Randy doesn’t have any family—well, just an elderly aunt who was his legal guardian. His parents died in a plane crash when he was only a year old. His aunt put him in boys’ boarding schools and summer camps as soon as he was old enough. He loved the idea of family. Probably because he never had one,” he added ruefully.

  “Randy didn’t admit to himself that he was gay until he graduated from college. He spent years and years hiding from his feelings. His life wasn’t very happy. You know, he was really looking forward to this trip. He … he said that he thought it might be the only chance he ever had to go to a family reunion.”

  Susan gave Darcy a moment to regain control before continuing. “And after the ranger talk?”

  “I went to the bar and checked out who was there.… In other words, I was scouting out the place for family. I saw you and your husband, in fact. But the people I was trying to avoid weren’t around, so Randy and I had a few hot buttered rums. And then we went to bed, too.

  “The next day we got up early, had breakfast, and took that class in cross-country skiing. You remember?”

  “Yes. Didn’t you say something to Randy about how your father controlled your mother? I don’t exactly remember, but it seems to me that some sort of comment was made.”

  “I don’t remember specifically, but it’s totally and completely true. My mother was ruled by my father. He set the standards of the family, and she had to live with them. For instance, he bought the cabin we had up in Door County without even telling her about it. My mother tells the story that she was away for a long weekend settling some details of her parents’ will, and she came home to discover that they were the proud owners of two homes. That’s not normal in a marriage, is it?”

  Susan was a lot older than Darcy and less likely to divide the world into normal and abnormal. “But your sister told me that your mother loved that cabin, that she had designed a special garden of some sort.…”

  “I didn’t say that she doesn’t love the cabin; she does. My mother has learned to make the best of a lot of things. In fact, it’s a talent she has, a real talent.
She has taken the life my father has given her and made something extraordinary out of it.”

  Susan thought that it didn’t take a whole lot of talent to make something of a life that included two homes, five healthy children, and the income required to amply meet the needs of all. But then she remembered the stillbirth and the miscarriages. Money didn’t cure everything. She decided to return to the original topic. “So you and Randy took the ski class in the morning. What happened in the afternoon?”

  “We didn’t make it till afternoon.” Darcy’s answer was almost a whisper.

  “You mean …” Susan had temporarily forgotten the body under the snow.

  “Randy and I left the class as soon as the instructor dismissed us,” Darcy began. “Remember how he told everyone to practice by going around that circle near the parking lot?”

  Susan nodded. She had traveled that path for almost an hour, trying to synchronize arm and leg movements.

  “Well, Randy wanted to practice, but I was tired. And looking back, I know that I was nervous about meeting the family later in the day. I had run into Joyce at breakfast, and she told me that she was worried that Carlton was drinking again. And he had been dry for years! I guess I felt like everything was beginning to fall apart.”

  “And what happened then?”

  “I had this terrible argument with Randy. And it was all my fault—it really was,” he added, seeing she was about to interrupt. “I know myself pretty well, and I know that I blame other people when things get to be too much for me to handle. And that morning things were getting to be too much for me. Amazing, isn’t it? Looking back, I realize that everything was almost perfect then, but at the time … Well, hindsight isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be, is it? Anyway, I picked an argument with Randy. I told him that he was being stupid and enjoying this damn family reunion because he was selfish, that if he cared about me, he wouldn’t be having so much fun. I said that he really cared more about having a family than being with me … and all sorts of other awful things. I get sick whenever I think about it.”